Stupidity strikes again at the Corner

Lisa Schiffren would stand an excellent chance to make a good case for keeping prostitution illegal if she were to pursue the potentially fruitful subject of the prostitute-slave trade in the Eastern Europe - Amsterdam pipeline. But otherwise her post is an excellent example of a person trying to justify government action by claiming that the government needs to solve problems that only exist because the government has already taken to meddling with stuff it ought to have left alone.

Without doing a full fisking, I have to celebrate this whopper of a line:

While the "consenting adults" standards is [sic] fine for non-commercial sexual transactions, including Rauch's adultery, once you are talking about big time prostitution — and this service went as high as $5500 an hour — you can bet organized crime is involved.

[chuckling gleefully] Now, just why do you think organized crime might be involved in prostitution? Let's provide Lisa with a hint or two here. Is organized crime involved in the illegal drug traffic? Um, yep. Is organized crime involved in the cigarette trade? Um, no. Now what might the difference be here?

Compare Lisa's sentence to this one:

"While the 'consenting adults' standard is fine for non-commercial production of alcohol for home consumption, once you are talking about big time alcohol production — and a single lot of Château d'Yquem has gone for more than a million dollars — you can bet organized crime is involved."

An entirely true sentence - if the speaker were speaking during the days of Prohibition and Al Capone. But is it true now that we've had enough of a collective return to sanity to repeal Prohibition?

What a maroon.

I emphasize again that, although my own opinion is that prostitution (for adults, obviously) should be legal, there are potentially good arguments lurking in Lisa's post...along with the stupidity. So, um, basically, I'm saying her post is probably very similar to most of my own...